Every summer since 2018, people around Little Lake Butte des Morts have logged laps on the trail that circles it, mostly for a free T-shirt and bragging rights. This year the rules changed. For the first time, the three municipalities that share the loop, Fox Crossing, Menasha, and Neenah, are competing against each other to see which one produces the most residents who finish 50 laps. The season closes Tuesday, September 1. If you live in Fox Crossing and haven't logged a single loop yet, you have four days.
A Village Program, Not Just a City One
Log Your Loops started as a Future Neenah initiative, a way to get people using the newly finished Loop the Little Lake trail after its last two trestles opened in 2018. For years it read like a Neenah event that other towns were welcome to join. This year that changed on paper as much as in practice: the 2026 season is run jointly by the Fox Crossing, Menasha, and Neenah Parks and Recreation departments, sponsored by ThedaCare, with Evergreen Credit Union covering the cost of registering through Fox Crossing so the challenge is free to enter no matter which town you sign up with.
The mechanics are simple. A full loop is 5 kilometers, a little over 3 miles, tracked on a paper worksheet you pick up at registration and turn in between July 8 and September 8. Log 50 loops between Memorial Day and Labor Day and you get a free shirt. What's new is the layer on top: this year, the three partner communities are keeping score on who produces the most 50-Loopers. It is a friendly number, not a formal contest with a trophy, but it is the first time Fox Crossing has been counted as a peer competitor rather than a guest participant in a Neenah-branded event.
That distinction matters more here than it would somewhere with a longer municipal history. Fox Crossing didn't exist as its own village until 2016, when the Town of Menasha incorporated and took the new name. A decade in, this is one of the first shared civic rituals where the village shows up on the scoreboard by its own name, next to two cities that have run their park systems for over a century.
Four Bridges, One Loop
The route itself is short enough to finish in an evening and varied enough that regulars pick favorites. Starting from Fritse Park, the trailhead building with restrooms that the village built specifically because the trail got too popular for a gravel lot, the 3.5-mile loop crosses four named trestles, each with its own reason to slow down:
- The Fox Cities Trestle, at roughly 1,600 feet the longest of the four, carries you over open water with views of the 441 bridge, the paper mills, and the shoreline development on both sides.
- The Slough Trestle, a shorter 150-foot crossing, is the one birdwatchers linger on, with blue herons, egrets, and osprey working the shallow, slow-moving water below.
- The Neenah Trestle, about 740 feet, runs in the shadow of the Plexus World Headquarters building, looking back at downtown Neenah and the still-undeveloped Arrowhead Park.
- The Menasha Trestle, roughly 725 feet, closes the loop with views of James Island and the kind of sunset that shows up in half the photos tagged from this trail.
Village materials put Fox Crossing's total trail mileage at about 20 miles across 21 parks and open spaces covering 261 acres, so the Loop is one piece of a larger system, not the whole of it. But it's the piece that gets the organized attention, the sponsor logos, and now the interlocal scoreboard.
The season had its own kickoff this year too. On June 5, organizers held Listen to the Loop, staggering live performances across three parks along the route so people could walk between them, with food trucks and beverage stands at each stop and a non-alcoholic setup at Arrowhead Park to keep that stretch family-friendly. It was the kind of one-night event that's easy to miss if you weren't already registered and watching for it, which is part of why the closing week matters more than the opening one. Most people don't hit 50 loops from a single evening of enthusiasm in June. They hit it by treating the trail as a habit through July and August, and the habit either shows up in the numbers by September 1 or it doesn't.
One Practical Note Before You Head Out
The Fox Valley took a direct hit from an EF-3 tornado on July 27, and Fox Crossing was among the communities with real damage. Parks departments across the area, including Neenah's, have been asking trail users through August to stay alert for storm-damaged limbs still hanging in the tree canopy near paths and parking areas, the kind of hazard that isn't visible until a gust moves it. It's a small thing to keep in mind on an evening loop, not a reason to skip the trail, just a reason to glance up occasionally the way you'd watch your footing on ice in January.
What Comes After the Loop Closes
The 3.5-mile Loop the Little Lake circuit isn't the end point of the region's trail ambitions. A separate, still-proposed project called the High Cliff Connection would extend the trail corridor east from the Miron Trestle Bridge in Menasha, tying into the existing Friendship Trail and eventually reaching High Cliff State Park on Lake Winnebago. It's not built, and there's no completion date attached to it yet, but the planning partnership includes staff from the cities, villages, and counties across the region working alongside the Wisconsin Department of Transportation on feasibility studies for connecting segments. If it happens, the loop that ends at Fritse Park today becomes one segment of something considerably longer, and Fox Crossing's trailhead stops being an endpoint and starts being a junction.
For now, the version that exists is the one worth using this week. The season closes Tuesday. Worksheets are due back to whichever Parks and Recreation department you registered with, and this is the first year the village's numbers get compared to Menasha's and Neenah's side by side.
If you're weighing whether a neighborhood built around this kind of trail access, park density, and small-town civic energy fits how you want to live day to day, the team at CENTURY 21 Ace Realty knows Fox Crossing and the rest of the Fox Cities well enough to walk you through what different pockets of the village actually offer beyond the trail map. Contact us when you're ready to talk it through.
